PRESS BRIEFING BY
UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ARMS CONTROL JOHN HOLUM,
ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR
STRATEGY AND REQUIREMENTS TED WARNER,
UNDER SECRETARY OF ENERGY ERNIE MONIZ,
AND FORMER NSC SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR
DEFENSE AND ARMS CONTROL POLICY BOB BELL
The Briefing Room

12:10 P.M. EDT

MR. LEAVY: Good afternoon. Welcome to the White House. As you
know, the President is engaged in a major effort on the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty. He'll be speaking about this issue as a part of the
Defense Reauthorization signing this afternoon. To give you a little
bit more perspective and detail on the treaty and its provisions, we
have an all-star cast.

Let me introduce Bob Bell, former Senior Director for Defense and
Arms Control Policy at the National Security Council, coming off the
bench this week for us; followed by John Holum, who is the Under
Secretary of State for Arms Control-designate; followed by Ernie Moniz,
Under Secretary of Energy; and, finally Ted Warner, Assistant Secretary
of Defense for Strategy and Threat Reduction. Bob, you want to start us
off?

MR. BELL: Thank you, David. Let me first say it's great to be
back. I'd like to lead off, by way of introduction, by making a few
remarks to put the debate that's coming on this treaty in context. And
then I will be followed by a number of my colleagues from the
inter-agency that are going to address specific issues that are central
to the debate in more detail. And then we can take any questions you
have.

I think it's instructive to remember that several months before the
Clinton administration took office, in the fall of 1992, the Senate
voted, for all intents and purposes, to take the United States out of
the nuclear testing business. In September of 1992, the Senate, by an
overwhelming majority vote, passed the Hatfield-Exon-Mitchell Nuclear
Moratorium Amendment, which had three key elements. The first was to
set an absolute deadline for the U.S. to stop testing. The second was
to require a major scientific effort to ensure that we could maintain
confidence in our nuclear weapons, absent actual nuclear tests. And the
third part -- the last, but not least, part -- of the moratorium was to
require the next administration to negotiate a CTB no later than
September 1996.

Now, the Senate, in its wisdom, recognized the crucial
inter-relationship of these three elements. First, for the U.S. to
stop, and confidently stop, actual nuclear tests, we needed a very
high-tech program in place to assure that we could maintain very high
confidence in our nuclear weapons -- because for the Senate, as for this
administration, strategic nuclear deterrence still matters. It's still
a critical element of our national security posture.

And equally important, the Senate recognized then that a U.S.
unilateral moratorium would have been inimical to our national security
interest, absent some mechanism for getting other nuclear powers,
indeed, the rest of the world if possible, into the same set of
restrictions. And that is why the Senate demanded that we achieve a CTB
by 1996.

Now, some are apparently arguing, in the course of this debate
that's now beginning, that we should support the continuation of the
U.S. unilateral moratorium, but reject the treaty. And that strikes me
as an absurdly contradictory position, because it would keep in place,
unilaterally, a total ban on U.S. nuclear testing, but virtually invite
the other nuclear powers and nuclear want-to-be's to conduct nuclear
tests of their own.

Let's just think about that for a minute. Let's take the case of
China, which has been much in the news in the last year or so. Without
nuclear testing, for example, China is going to be greatly constrained
in any effort to put multiple warheads on its existing strategic force.
This challenge for China of MIRV-ing its strategic force, which could
have major impact on the strategic balance, is going to be benefitted if
they can conduct nuclear tests. With the CTB in place, that option for
China is greatly constrained. And with the CTB in place, China will
certainly face a more daunting challenge in trying to take advantage of
whatever gains they did or did not register in the course of nuclear
espionage efforts.

That's precisely why the Cox Commission explicitly noted the value
of the CTB, vis-a-vis the situation we're facing now with China. So it
seems to me that those in the Senate who are most concerned by Chinese
nuclear programs and Chinese nuclear espionage should be in the
forefront of those supporting this treaty.

Now, after taking office in 1993, the Clinton administration moved
quickly and decisively to faithfully and fully implement all three parts
of the congressionally-mandated moratorium. We put in place at the cost
of $4.5 billion a year, a science-based stockpile stewardship program
that the directors of our nuclear labs have told the President they are
confident will allow us to maintain extremely high confidence in our
nuclear inventory even absent nuclear testing. And we pulled off what
some thought was mission impossible, which was negotiating the CTB to
conclusion in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva with the United
States being the first country to sign in September, 1996.

And, lastly, working closely with the Secretary of Defense and the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, we formulated our own package of six crucial
safeguards that supplement the treaty and enhance the U.S. ability to
maintain its national security interest to the highest standards under
this treaty.

Now, the critics seem to be making three main arguments against
this treaty. Let's just think about them briefly for one minute. The
first argument I hear often is that the stockpile stewardship program
won't work. It won't work notwithstanding the professional judgment of
the laboratory directors that it will. And not just the laboratory
directors. I would note that in 1995, the JASONS -- all caps, that's an
acronym -- the JASONS group, which is one of the most prestigious
bipartisan groups of American scientists and physicists, expressed its
full confidence in our ability to do this task.

Critics, to be sure, can point to dissenting views within the
scientific community. You can find a scientist, here or there, to quote
that says, I don't think it will work. And that's what debate is all
about. But let's remember that there are dissenting scientific views on
the issue of national missile defense, which you're dutifully reporting
as well.

There are always scientists who are going to have contrary views,
and there are certainly a number of scientists who are saying that
missile defense can't work against realistic targets. But those on the
Hill who seem to have no faith in American technological prowess and
know-how, when it comes to stockpile stewardship, ironically seem to be
the first to dismiss the views of dissenting scientists on the issue of
missile defense.

The Clinton administration happens to believe in American
scientific prowess and know-how. We happen to believe that we can do
both. We believe that we can get NMD to work and we're not going to
deploy it unless it will; and we believe -- as do the lab directors, the
JASONS and the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- that the stockpile stewardship
program can deliver.

But what if the dissenting views, God forbid, in this case are
right? What if it turns out that we can land on the moon, but we can't
meet this technological challenge, despite $4.5 billion a year, despite
the fact that we're building on a foundation of over 1,000 actual
nuclear tests conducted by the United States before we stopped in
September, 1992.

The President as assured the Senate in the sixth of the six
safeguards, Safeguard F, that should that eventuality attain, and he
said he does not think it will, that it is extremely remote that it
would. But should it attain, if he is informed by the Secretary of
Defense, the Secretary of Energy, as advised by the Nuclear Weapons
Council and the nuclear labs and the strategic command that we cannot
maintain confidence in our nuclear strategic deterrent, that he is
prepared to withdraw from the treaty. The treaty has a clause that
allows withdrawal in cases of supreme national interest.

Now, the second argument seems to be that we can't verify the
treaty. And I will be the first to tell you that this nuclear test ban
treaty is not absolutely verifiable down to the most minute level of
nuclear yield. We understood that when we negotiated it. But we
maintain and strongly believe that this treaty is effectively
verifiable. And by that I mean that any state that wants to conduct
nuclear tests to perfect some new, advanced, or more dangerous nuclear
design that could have negative implications for our national security,
is going to have to conduct testing at such a yield, and in such numbers
of tests to have any confidence, that the treaty is going to have a
deterrent effect.

But I would ask this question: for those who are concerned by
prospective low-yield nuclear testing among rogue states; for those who
are confused, or concerned, by what Russia may or may not be doing, in
tunnels in Novaya Zemla in the Arctic, how does defeating this treaty
help the problem? With this treaty, we have tools that we will gain --
in terms of meeting our monitoring requirements -- that we otherwise
will not have: additional monitoring stations and, most importantly, an
option for on-site inspection. Defeating the treaty would deny our
intelligence community the additional benefits of those additional
tools.

Now, last, it's said, well, there's no point in the United States
approving, because there's a number of other countries that have to
approve, and they're not going to do it, so what does it matter? The
treaty will never come into force, anyway.

And I would simply point out that two years ago, we had a great and
historic debate in the United States Senate on the Chemical Weapons
Treaty. And that same proposition was put on the table. That same
proposition was debated. That same proposition was taken to a Senate
vote, because we faced amendments that would have held our observance of
the Chemical Weapons Treaty hostage to Russia, or China, or rogue
states, ratifying the treaty themselves. The Senate, in its wisdom two
years ago, decisively defeated all of those amendments. And the critics
were quite simply proven wrong, because after the United States ratified
the Chemical Weapons Treaty, Russia ratified. And China ratified. And
Iran ratified. And that treaty is fully enforced, and every month gains
additional adherents.

We think the best way to prevent nuclear states from advancing
their stockpile is to put this treaty in place. And we think the best
chance for putting the treaty in place, and persuading countries like
India and Pakistan -- who are on the threshold of saying yes -- to say
yes, is for us to show leadership. After all, throughout history,
history has changed when the United States has led.

And I will end there, and turn it over to John Holum.

UNDER SECRETARY HOLUM: Thank you, Bob. The Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty has a long history, a bipartisan history, with support from our
strongest national security leaders. The quest for a Comprehensive Test
Ban actually goes back to the Eisenhower administration, when President
Eisenhower ordered a moratorium on testing in 1958. President Kennedy's
partial test ban in 1963 banned testing in the atmosphere. And in 1974
and 1976, threshold test ban treaties banned underground explosions
under 150 kilotons.

As Bob said, in 1993 President Clinton, following a directive from
Congress, directed renewed efforts. And the result was that we met the
deadline, and he signed in 1996 a treaty that bans nuclear weapons test
explosions, and all other nuclear explosions. No exceptions. No
thresholds. So President Eisenhower's original goal has finally been
realized.

Now, we made clear in the negotiations that we would continue to
maintain our stockpiles. The treaty bans the bang, not the bomb. Under
Secretary Moniz will speak to the safety and reliability of our
stockpiles. We also negotiated persistently to make sure that the
treaty allowed use of our own national technical means of verification
to monitor compliance, along with the official treaty monitoring system
of some 321 sensors all around the world -- including, for example, some
30 additional sensors in Russia.

Now, Bob has said we can't detect down to zero. But we have
reported formally to the Senate that the treaty is effectively
verifiable -- that we can, under this treaty, protect our security.
Ratification by 44 named states, including the United States, is
necessary for entry into force. Forty-one of those 44 have signed.
Twenty-three of those, and many of our other -- 23 of those have
ratified so far, including France and the United Kingdom, and many of
our other allies. As with the chemical weapons, we expect that our lead
will be followed.

As to security benefits, Assistant Secretary Warner will address
these. But practically speaking, the treaty does limit the ability of
Russia and China to upgrade their nuclear forces. But also keep in mind
that they're already nuclear weapon states.

For us, the main security value of this treaty is
non-proliferation. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty strengthens the
global standard against the spread of nuclear weapons, and makes it much
harder for any country to make nuclear weapons, especially smaller,
lighter designs that are easy to conceal and deliver -- the kind that
would be most threatened to us.

On South Asia, both India and Pakistan have pledged at various
times to sign. The CTBT there can help contain a deadly nuclear arms
race between countries that aren't constrained by the nonproliferation
treaty. If we get North Korea under the test ban they'll be less able
to exploit their ballistic missile capabilities against us. The same is
true of Iran, and they have signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Nonproliferation is an urgent national priority. The United States
is the leader of the global effort against the spread of weapons of mass
destruction. A world in which the rogues have nuclear weapons would be
a world of peril for all Americans. The Test Ban Treaty is not a silver
bullet, but it's another valuable tool. Nonproliferation is hard,
uphill work. The American people should not expect good results if the
Senate denies us the means.

With or without the CTBT we have to monitor possible nuclear test
activity by others. Why not make the task easier by adding the treaty's
international monitoring system and the possibility of on-site
inspections to our own assets. With or without the CTBT we have no
plans and no need to test -- why not extend the same limits formally
with the force of law to others?

The Senate faces a basic choice of direction. No treaty ever meets
the standard of perfection. But we and the world are now set on the
path away from nuclear explosions. Defeat of the treaty would reverse
that course, begin to unravel the standard and head back toward more
nuclear tests -- big tests, most likely by countries we'd rather didn't
have these weapons. The stakes for our global leadership and our
security goals couldn't be higher.

UNDER SECRETARY MONIZ: One of the major issues in this debate, of
course, is that of our ability to maintain a safe and reliable nuclear
stockpile in the absence of testing. And, as Bob Bell said earlier,
this remains a supreme national interest for this country. There are
several challenges in this task: maintaining weapons as they age;
establishing a capability to replace and certify new weapons components;
training new weapons scientists; and reestablishing an operational
manufacturing capability.

These challenges are being met today. I can say that with a
confidence that is grounded, first of all, in our history. Our history,
50 years of experience of more than 1,000 nuclear tests, of 150 tests
with modern weapon types, and over -- or approximately 15,000
surveillance tests. This is really the grounding of our program. Each
weapon in the enduring stockpile has been thoroughly tested and is
subjected to regular, in-depth surveillance.

Now, seven years following our last testing experience, we have
implemented, in this administration, an experimentally based, scientific
program, using both experiment and computer simulation, to provide the
integrating elements to sustain reliability. This program, I want
to stress, already has had many successes. We have a detailed,
coordinated, integrated weapons plan -- one also integrated with
military requirements. We have gone through three rigorous
certification procedures involving the labs, STRATCOM, the Nuclear
Weapons Council and others -- including scientific advisors. We have
resolved, today, stockpile problems that were not resolved in the years
of testing.

We have met new military requirements in the absence of testing --
for example, requirements for a deep penetrating weapon, the so-called
B-61-11. We have obtained new, critical scientific data using
non-nuclear experiments -- for example, we now know how plutonium
behaves when it ages, one of the key questions for maintaining the
stockpile.

We have attained already world-record computing speeds, as we march
towards an unprecedented capability of 100 trillion operations per
second, to provide new computer simulation capabilities, revolutionizing
our stockpiling capabilities -- and, frankly, American science, as well.
We have reestablished manufacturing capabilities. We have a tritium
decision. We are reestablishing a plutonium pit production capability.
We have refocused, through this program, the missions at the weapons
laboratories, with a new, science-based program.

These are accomplishments, already today, in our progress towards a
full new scientific infrastructure, that will be in place, completely,
in the next three to five years. This involves high-powered lasers,
high-powered compression devices. It involves, as I said earlier, an
unprecedented computational capability. And it involves experiments,
non-nuclear experiments, at our test site, that also addresses one of
the other safeguards the President put in place -- that of maintaining
our ability to resume testing in the unlikely event that we should have
to.

So this is a very aggressive program. It is well-integrated. It
is a major science and technology capability that is being put in place,
building upon what Bob Bell referred to as unparalleled American
technological strength.

There have been questions raised, in that, again, some scientists
question the ability to maintain our confidence down the road, five, 10,
15 years down the road. First of all, we are addressing that every year
through this rigorous certification process put in place. But,
secondly, I want to stress that, frankly, the issue of the scientists
working on parts of this program, questioning, is actually the heart of
the program. That's what doing science is all about. It is then up to
the lab directors, et cetera, to integrate the information they receive,
including the questions, to make a judgment to the President each and
every year about the safety and liability of the stockpile. We are on
the verge of a fourth certification process in which exactly that
assurance will be given to the President. Thank you.

DR. WARNER: Thanks. Let me just address a couple of the issues
from the Department of Defense's perspective on the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty. We have heard from previous speakers the issue of what do
we gain from this treaty. Let me underscore those issues. First of
all, the treaty will make it more difficult for the existing nuclear
states to develop additional, more advanced weapons.

Without the ability to do significant testing, then they will not
be able to, in fact, develop new weapons. So in the absence of testing,
the ability to be confronted with new weapons that might bring new
dangers to the United States, basically will be foreclosed. Secondly,
this same prohibition makes it difficult for the nuclear want-to-be's to
acquire real nuclear capabilities with any confidence whatsoever. In
the absence of the ability to test, there are some theories that they
might be able to get simple vision weapons, but even those weapons they
could not have any real confidence that they would work.

The third issue that often emerges is the question about the
reliability of our nuclear weapons, the issue that Under Secretary Moniz
has just described in some detail.

In the Department of Defense, we work in cooperation with the
Department of Energy to do an annual certification of the safety and
reliability of American nuclear weapons in the absence of the ability to
test. This system has been in place for the last few years. As he
said, we've gone through three certifications, we are on the brink of a
fourth.

That certification process involves a highly cooperative activity
between the services, the Strategic Command, and the nuclear weapons
labs. On an annual basis, each individual weapon has a working group
that focuses upon it, develops a comprehensive plan for activity for the
year in order to do diagnostics about the reliability and effectiveness
of the weapon; they carry out that set of activities, relying
increasingly on the new capabilities being developed under the
Department of Energy in its science-based stockpile stewardship program.
The supercomputers, the ability to do subcritical testing, that's high
explosive testing with fissile material, but one which does not, in
fact, create a nuclear chain reaction, and a series of other kinds of
activities that simulate various elements of the combined activities
that occur when a nuclear weapon explodes.

This activity is then reviewed independently by a group that works
as an advisory panel for the Commander In Chief of Strategic Command.
It is also reviewed by key figures within the Pentagon, and on the basis
of that review, the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of Defense, on
an annual basis, provide a certification to the President, if they are
confident from all of the information they have gotten, that our weapons
are safe and reliable and no resumption of nuclear testing is required.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff have recently, within this past week,
examined this question of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. They have
concluded once again that in the presence of the six safeguards that
were noted earlier -- safeguards that President Clinton made clear would
have to be part and parcel, the conditions under which we could find it
acceptable to sign and be part of a comprehensive test ban that, in the
presence of those six safeguards, they are confident that they can
sustain the nuclear capabilities of the United States and, therefore,
they told the Secretary of Defense and told the President that they
support the conclusion and ratification and entry into force of the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

So we can sustain our nuclear forces, hopefully at increasingly
lower levels, through the arms reduction process. But we will be able
to sustain them in the absence of nuclear testing, thanks to the wonders
of American science as was noted earlier.

This treaty is in the interest of the United States; we very
strongly believe that the Senate ought to ratify it and we ought to go
about getting the rest of the ratifications to bring it into force.
Thanks.

Q John or Bob, how is it with all this information that you've
failed to be able to persuade the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and the
Senate Majority Leader? What don't they see?

MR. BELL: Well, I would just caution against any rush to judgment.
The President signed this treaty three years ago. In September, we
submitted it to the Senate in 1997. For two years -- for two years --
we have been asking the Senate for a chance to make our case in a
hearing in the Committee of Jurisdiction, the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, a very prestigious and historic American committee.

We have not had a single hearing on the CTB in the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee. We think we have a case. This case we just laid
out for you which, if presented to the United States Senate and to
individual senators in turn, is compelling and persuasive. But we are
now very pleased to learn that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
at the instruction of its chairman, Senator Helms, is going to have that
first hearing this week, on Thursday, at which we will make this case
that we just made to you. And we would hope that as many senators as
possible would withhold judgment on this treaty until they hear all the
facts, pro and con, and make a decision before they vote, but not before
the hearings even begin.

Q Which case would you like to make if the United States, if the
Senate does not ratify the treaty? What kind of case are you going to
try to make two to three years down the road? What will the nuclear
world look like?

MR. BELL: We are working very hard this week to win this, but I'm
not going to get into hypotheticals. I'm not assuming failure; I'm
assuming success.

Q Mr. Warner, or Dr. Warner, you talked about the verification
process, or the certification process that the Department of Energy and
the Pentagon go through each year. Let me raise not a hypothetical
question, but a devil's advocate question. These reports are put
together by a team of scientists and appointed political figures.
Knowing that they get $4.5 billion a year to prove that these computer
simulations work, knowing what result the administration wants and has
politically made a judgment that it will accept, is there ever a Team B
of scientists with access to the same data -- not people who are captive
members of the nuclear labs and the nuclear priesthood -- that look at
the same information from an outsider point of view, without taking a
paycheck from the administration and marching to political orders?

DR. WARNER: There is precisely such a Team B in existence, and it
has worked on each of these certification processes. The Commander In
Chief of the Strategic Command has a group of voluntary individuals,
former weapons scientists, former military officers, experts in defense
and security issues, called the Strategic Advisory Group.

There is a sub-panel within that called the Stockpile Assessment
Team. Within that team, we have individuals in most cases that are
alumni of responsibilities, if you will, in the nuclear weapons
fraternity over the last several years. This group has an opportunity
to review in depth the individual reports, weapon by weapon by weapon,
and then they provide an independent assessment to the Commander of the
Strategic Command annually.

Q And have they always ratified the findings of the in-house team?

DR. WARNER: So far, they have, with each time, concluded that we
did not need to initiate nuclear testing. They have identified problems
in many areas and helped us identify -- and pushed us most certainly, to
get about the process of fixing them. In most cases, we were already
aware of these and the process was underway, but they do provide an
independent, critical view of the state of our nuclear weapons
stockpile.

Q Do they have access to all the highly classified information?

DR. WARNER: They do. They are cleared and they have access to all
of the information that they seek.

UNDER SECRETARY MONIZ: Let me just add one comment to that. In
addition, there is a well-known, what we call a peer review process
involving the two weapons design laboratories. Each laboratory that
designed originally a specific weapon system in the enduring stockpile
has the lead responsibility for the annual review, but that is then, in
turn, reviewed by the other laboratory, and that review has never been
described as terribly gentle.

MR. BELL: Let me just add one third point of reassurance. When
this certification that the President submits to the Congress goes
forward -- and as Secretary Warner said we've done, three of these,
annually, so far, a fourth one is getting teed up to go up -- we don't
just send the Congress a one-line bumper sticker "the weapons are still
safe," We submit all of the supporting documentation from all of these
scientific groups.

So there's another safeguard in place here. It was envisioned by
the Constitution. It's called the United States Congress. They're
getting all of the data, all of the views. They can parse that, they
can hold hearings, they can call people in. If they think that
someone's just being bought off here, there are many, many resources
available to the United States Congress to exercise its constitutional
oversight role.

But, in fact, what the Congress has done through the last several
years -- and Secretary Moniz always can give you the details, has funded
this $4.5 billion stockpile stewardship program as we've requested, plus
or minus, you know, on the margin. So they must have some confidence
that this could work, because they are appropriating and authorizing the
expenditure of these funds for this purpose.

Q Mr. Bell, the point has been made by the Chairmen of the Armed
Services and the Foreign Relations Committee and the Majority Leader
that the time isn't right to ratify this treaty, that until such time as
the United States can with absolute confidence verify subcritical
nuclear testing, the United States should neither give up the stick of
deterrence that testing provides or the ability to develop new weapons.
How do you allay those fears?

MR. BELL: Well, first, let's be clear. Any testing that's done
sub-critical -- below the threshold in which the explosion achieves
nuclear criticality -- is permitted by the treaty. The United States
insisted on that; that's one of the means we intend to use to maintain
confidence in the weapons. We conducted such a sub-critical test just
last week. We've been doing two or three a year --

UNDER SECRETARY MONIZ: Three this year.

MR. BELL: -- the last couple of years. That's part of the program.

The issue is extremely low-yield testing, like in the tens of tons
-- the kind of test that would be comparable to an explosion at a
construction site, or setting off a large-yield conventional weapon.
Now, my question would be this: how better to get a handle on that than
to have an on-site inspection option? Because you're never, ever -- it
is beyond the realms of American science -- as good as American science
is as we know it today -- to imagine a seismic monitoring regime, with
stations in place, that could detect and discriminate a nuclear test of,
say, ten tons, from a lot of tests that are going on all around the
world of conventional weapons; from construction activity that's going
on around the world; or from the background earthquake noise that's
going on around the world.

So there is a natural physical limit to how low you can go with
absolute verification, if you're relying on seismic detection. That is
why the crucial breakthrough for the CTB was the American success in
persuading the world that there had to be on-site inspection. That
wasn't a given.

When we started the negotiation, there were a lot of countries that
fought that. And we worked hard to get on-site inspection into the
final treaty. That's the means to do it.

My recommendation to Senator Warner -- who I worked with for many
years and have great respect for -- would be to consider how we're going
to do this monitoring task, how the Intelligence Committee is going to
do that, absent the tools that the CTB will bring to bear on the
problem.

Q And are you confident that if you petition the North Koreans,
under the provisions of the treaty, for an on-site inspection, they'll
open the doors and welcome you in?

MR. BELL: Well, they don't have any choice, if the international
organization that will implement the CTB decides to approve an on-site
inspection. It's not at the subject -- it's not at the volition of the
challenged state. If the international organization votes to send in
the inspectors, they must be received -- or they are then found in
violation of the treaty. And the treaty contains provisions on
sanctions for states that are in violation.

Q How do you think that Iraq is going to react to this? Are you
hopeful that on-site inspections in Iraq will be effective?

MR. BELL: Well, Iraq is subject to, has been subject to a whole
nuclear inspection regime by the IAEA. In many senses, North Korea took
the fall once the IAEA realized in the wake of the original Iraqi
experience in the Gulf War how far Iraq had gotten under the previously
lax IAEA safeguards.

In the wake of the Gulf War, the IAEA said we've got to have a
tighter regime, and North Korea fell afoul of that. So there are a lot
of different ways to approach this problem. But states that are
signatory to the NPT and are participating in the IAEA are facing a very
robust set of inspections under that regime as well.

UNDER SECRETARY HOLUM: Let me just add to that, that the test ban
-- the reason I didn't mention Iraq in the rack-up of countries that are
of particular concern is that Iraq is, as Bob said, subject to this
additional set of constraints and inspections that go way beyond,
admittedly, what the test ban provides for. It's very important to
recognize that those will remain in place -- the Security Council's
requirement to enforce those -- regardless of the CTBT, those controls
were made on Iraq.

Q Two things. You said earlier, I believe it was you who said that
China and Russia could continue to upgrade their nuclear forces. For
us, the main benefit from this treaty is nonproliferation. So would you
explain why China and Russia would be able to do this, with special
provisions for them? And the other question is, in terms of a computer
simulations you do, if actual testing is a 10, how good are computer
simulations on a scale of 10?

UNDER SECRETARY HOLUM: What I said was that it would constrain
Russia and China; but the constraints on Russia and China, since they're
already nuclear weapon states, are less important to us from a security
standpoint than the constraints on other countries that might want to be
nuclear weapon states.

As Bob said, it will constrain China's capability to exploit
whatever information it has in pursuing advanced new warhead designs
from any source. It'll make it harder for them to develop multiple,
independently-targetable warheads. Russia will also be constrained.
There may be some things they can do. Most things that head toward the
direction of significant new weapons, they couldn't. So it'll constrain
both of those. That's important to us, but the even more important
value of the treaty is to prevent the spread to more countries.

UNDER SECRETARY MONIZ: On the question about simulations: first,
I think it's very important to stress that the program is not simply a
simulation program. We are not trying to maintain weapons simply on the
basis of computer simulations. It's an experimentally based program.
We have the historical data on these weapons systems. And I want to
stress we are doing stockpile stewardship. I mentioned a variety of
facilities. We are doing experiments on virtually every subsystem of
the weapon. We are learning about how components behave as they age.

Then we use the simulation -- which has been benchmarked against
our historical tests -- to understand how a change in a particular
property would modify the weapon's performance, and then either do a
corrective action or say that it's okay. And the simulations have
already reached the point, as I mentioned, that we are even able to
explain historical anomalies in previous tests as part of our
benchmarking.

But think of the simulations as a technique to integrate our
experimental and observational data as the weapons age, and not as a
stand-alone way to try to understand a very, very complicated device.

Q Secretary Holum, regarding the sub-critical tests, many in the
anti-nuclear lobby -- and this is an especially important issue in Japan
-- say that because they involve fissile material, they are against the
-- they violate the spirit of the treaty that you're promoting today.
Will you consider that if you are really committed to banning nuclear
tests, why doesn't the United States halt these sub-critical tests?

UNDER SECRETARY HOLUM: For precisely the reason that Ernie and
others have just been describing. We made very clear during the course
of the negotiations that this was not a process to eliminate nuclear
weapons. They remain a part of our strategy. They need to be
maintained safely and reliably. And sub-critical, non-nuclear
experiments are part of that process, and are important to that process.

What you can't do -- and the dividing line under the treaty -- is
you can't have a self-sustaining chain reaction. You can't go
super-critical. You can't have a nuclear explosion. That dividing line
was well-understood at the time. It was clear to all the participants,
all the countries that were involved in the negotiation -- 61 countries,
at the end. So nobody should be surprised by this. And it's fully
consistent with the position we took throughout.

Q Russia has suggested that they would like their scientists to
have access to U.S. supercomputers used in these testing simulations.
Is the United States willing to consider giving Russia and any other
states access to these supercomputers to simulate testing, in order to
encourage compliance with the CTBT?

UNDER SECRETARY HOLUM: No.

Q Why not? Why not?

UNDER SECRETARY HOLUM: Because we have an obligation to maintain
the U.S. stockpile safely and reliably. We're not in the business of
maintaining other countries' nuclear stockpiles. I would add that
Russia --

Q Even if that will encourage compliance?

UNDER SECRETARY HOLUM: Russia has signed the treaty. We expect
they'll ratify when and if we do. The same with China. And they can
maintain their stockpile under the treaty; they have the same rights we
do. Our technology is different. Our needs are different. They have a
different history, and different types of nuclear weapons.

So mirror-imaging doesn't work here. We'll do what we need to do,
and I'm sure they'll do what they need to do within the limits of the
treaty.

Q I'm curious about the nuclear waste situation -- it's not quite
on the topic. Do you mind, David? The situation -- how dangerous is
the fact that the nuclear weapons are -- nuclear waste materials are
scattered around the country and will not be consolidated at Yucca
Mountain any time in the foreseeable future?

UNDER SECRETARY MONIZ: Yes, the situation there is that a National
Academy report has stated that there is no technical problem with
continued storage at the 72 locations which currently hold nuclear spent
fuel. There are issues of reaching capacity at certain spent fuel
pools, et cetera. But there is no recognizable danger. And the
National Academy, as I say, has endorsed that.

So we are proceeding on pace to finish our scientific evaluation of
Yucca Mountain -- understand how water flows, understand engineering
properties -- and we expect to submit a suitability recommendation to
the President in 2001.

Q If that can't be utilized, what alternatives do you have?

UNDER SECRETARY MONIZ: The alternatives would be to continue with
some form of storage until the geological issue is resolved --
specifically, dry cast storage, et cetera. But I do want to stress that
we issued a so-called viability assessment last December, and it
explicitly stated that today we see no show-stoppers in the science for
Yucca Mountain. We do have more work to do. We will complete that, as
I say, by 2001, and make a recommendation to the President.